Articles Archive - Page 118 of 158 - Pittsburgh Quarterly

Walking into The Clemente Museum at Engine House No. 25 in Lawrenceville, one word comes to mind: passion. The athletic passion of one of baseball’s greatest players, his passion for helping the less fortunate and making the world better for his and all children, and the passion of the man who created this moving monument …

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Arts

Richard Mellon Scaife

by Graham Shearing

When Dick Scaife died last summer, there surfaced a rash of brief memoirs of a man most often described as “reclusive,” and, more ambivalently, “mercurial.” Before then, he had been shielded from close scrutiny by the code of Omertà, a protective silence, at least by his friends and close associates. This frustrated those less friendly …

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Education

Classroom of the Future

by Sean D. Hamill

It is 12:23 p.m. on a school day, about seven minutes before DeAnna Kwiecinski’s robotics class starts at The Campus School of Carlow University in Pittsburgh. But dashing in the door, red-faced and breathing hard, are third-graders Lorenzo Auteri and Tyler Sharek. “We ran because we wanted to get here first,” Tyler said, fiddling with …

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Nature

Jennings Environmental Education Center

by Thomas Saunders

Among the many delightful, ecologically interesting places to visit within a short distance from Pittsburgh is the Jennings Environmental Education Center. This gorgeous destination along Route 8 is about 12 miles north of Butler, across from the historic Old Stone House. It is a wonderful place for a quick hike or for exploring five miles …

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Regional Annual Report

Lack of Diversity in the Region’s Workforce Raises Concerns

by Jeffery Fraser

Rayfield Lucas had heard there were well-paying jobs to be had in the shale gas industry; jobs that offered the opportunity to earn his way to a future more secure than the maintenance and warehouse work he’d done in the past could ever promise. He went for it. A little more than a month after …

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Science

A Stitch in Time

by Evan Pattak

Through the long, painful decline of Big Steel and the subsequent efforts of Pittsburgh to remake itself and regain economic viability, observers echoed a consistent theme: Pittsburgh will rise again because of the industriousness and talent of its workforce. Indeed, that committed workforce helped the region shape a multifaceted economy that grew supple and strong. …

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Opinion

The Two Sides of a Sale

by Lara Bruhn

I can’t decide which is more awkward, selling to someone or being sold to. I’ve been on both sides, and when the sale is right, there’s nothing better. An opportunity is identified, a plan is hatched, and both parties benefit. But as a small business owner, I spend a lot of time trying to extricate …

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Business

Marcellus Shale: A Tricky Situation

by Seamus McGraw

For years, it’s been a common rallying cry among activists that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has coddled its burgeoning natural gas industry at the expense of other state priorities. Perhaps nothing, they contend, has been more emblematic of that cozy relationship than the fact that Pennsylvania is the only active drilling state in the union …

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Business

AC / DC

by Ben Schmitt

Three University of Pittsburgh professors have seen the future in electrical innovation, and it begins in Homewood. They’re talking about an electrical revolution, and it’s fitting that Pittsburgh and one of its poorest neighborhoods could play a large role. In the late 1880s, Pittsburgh’s most famous Homewood resident, George Westinghouse, prevailed in what has since …

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Obituaries

Aldisert, Van Dusen, Standish, Budway, Geibel, Hilliard, Stewart

by PQ Staff

Ruggero J. Aldisert, 95 Aldisert was a distinguished jurist who served on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The son of an Italian immigrant, he volunteered for service with the U.S. Marines during World War II, seeing action in the Pacific theater as a battery commander on Johnston Island and the Marshall Islands and …

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Regional Annual Report

The Arts Emerge as a Driver of Revitalization

by Julia Fraser

The weight of support the arts enjoy in Pittsburgh was on public display last fall when local foundations bought the August Wilson Center for African American Culture, rescuing it from debt, troubled management and a suitor with designs for turning it into a Downtown hotel. Four foundations raised $5.8 million of the $7.9 million price …

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Regional Annual Report

Spotlight Shines On Pittsburgh’s Bumpy Ride to Teacher Evaluation Reform

by Julia Fraser

It’s a Saturday night in early November. A jazz band plays near a rocket simulator in the Carnegie Science Center where a line snakes toward the bar. People in cocktail attire chat over hors d’oeuvres. It’s not often that city public school teachers are at the center of a gala celebrating their work. But these …

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Regional Annual Report

College Graduates Increase But Region Still Lags

by Pittsburgh Today Staff

Earning a high school education is the building block of success. Southwestern Pennsylvanians shine in that regard. Where they come up short is in building on that foundation. And the consequences of not earning a college degree can be significant, local survey data show. Only 7.5 percent of residents aged 25 or older don’t have …

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Regional Annual Report

Badly Needed Reinvestment Expected Soon

by Pittsburgh Today Staff

The long-awaited reinvestment in transportation statewide can’t come too soon in southwestern Pennsylvania, where neglected roads and bridges leave no doubt there is plenty of work to be done with the region’s share of the $2.3 billion in state transportation funding approved more than a year ago. The Federal Highway Administration reports that 24.4 percent …

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Regional Annual Report

Low Crime Rates Are a Trademark of the Region

by Pittsburgh Today Staff

Crime varies by neighborhood, but southwestern Pennsylvania’s overall crime rate is the envy of Pittsburgh Today benchmark regions. And only Boston has a lower crime rate than the City of Pittsburgh in the ranking of benchmark cities. Crime rates in the seven-county Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area fell across every major category except rape and motor …

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Regional Annual Report

Land Banks Emerge with Hopes of Turning Back the Tide of Vacant Properties

by Jeffery Fraser

They were aware of the problem. How could they not be? The ghostly abandoned houses and weedchoked vacant lots in their municipalities numbered in the thousands. Vacancy, tax delinquency and blight had emerged as widely recognized cancers exclusive to no neighborhood. The crisis even resonated in Harrisburg, where lawmakers were drafting legislation to help fight …

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Regional Annual Report

Slow, Steady Growth is in Line with Tradition

by Pittsburgh Today Staff

The region’s housing market is anything but dramatic. It has long been the tortoise in the race: Slow, but reliably steady. Little has changed in a year’s time. Third-quarter 2014 housing prices, for example, rose 4.3 percent over the previous year, a rate slower than seven of the 14 Pittsburgh Today benchmark regions and below …

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Regional Annual Report

In a Fragmented Region, Big Problems Encourage Cooperation

by Pittsburgh Today Staff

Few regions have as many disparate local governments as southwestern Pennsylvania. While that is not likely to change soon, recent approaches to several chronic problems suggest an era of cooperation is rising among cities, boroughs and townships that lack the means to solve them on their own. In Allegheny County, nudging some 83 municipalities to …

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Regional Annual Report

As Demand Rises, Food Banks Face the Challenge of Change

by Julia Fraser

No one waiting at North Hills Community Outreach’s food pantry in Hampton wore dirty or tattered clothing. The children playing in the parking lot while their parents lined up for a few bags of groceries attended stable suburban schools. Several of the adults visiting the food pantry that October evening had at least a part-time …

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Regional Annual Report

Allegheny County Health Department Takes a New Approach to Solve Old Problems

by Julia Fraser

Dr. Karen Hacker arrived at the town hall meeting in Turtle Creek to find it crowded with TV news crews. The director of the Allegheny County Health Department had come that October evening to discuss the state of chronic disease in the community, which includes high rates of obesity and heart disease. Reporters came for …

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Regional Annual Report

When Better Is Not Good Enough

by Pittsburgh Today Staff

Last spring, the shenango, inc. coke plant on Neville Island was fined $600,000 for 330 air pollution violations and ordered to fix the problems that led to them. It was a familiar pattern in southwestern Pennsylvania in which pollution violations are detected, fines negotiated and fixes ordered—a process that has helped reduce pollution over decades, …

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Regional Annual Report

The 2015 Economic Outlook

by Stuart Hoffman

Southwestern Pennsylvania is in solid economic shape entering 2015. Employment is holding near all-time highs, and the seven-county unemployment rate has fallen to just under 5 percent—with the historic low of 4.1 percent in sight for 2016. But stalled labor force growth since late 2012 should temper excitement regarding the unemployment rate’s descent, as a …

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